Up and running

[Scag48]

Well I got the call last Wednesday at about 9 AM to head to work and I haven't had any time since then to check in. After a practically 12 hour night, all you want to do is sleep and plow your own place out when you're not working. The shifts are 10 hours, 11 PM to 9 AM, but we usually don't roll out of the shop until 9:30 and we arrive at 10:30. Plus, the drive up is an hour each way. So, it's more or less a 13 hour per day comittment, but it's fun as hell. I worked 8 shifts solid, now we're on a schedule and I work 4 days on, 3 off. My training is finished, the last shift I worked Christmas Eve/Christmas morning and I was given my own cat to run, I will be by myself from here on out.

The cats are difficult to run at first, they are incredibly senstive. The sticks that run the tracks aren't like anything I've run before. It's not like a dozer, you can't just throw them in gear and you brake a track when you want to turn one direction. They are F-N-R sticks, so you push them forward or backward to travel and if you bump one more than the other, you guessed it, that's the way you go. Takes a little getting used to, I'm finally able to keep things going straight. Top speed is about 12 MPH, a little more going downhill. The tillers are pretty advanced and can be a little tempermental, but we've yet to have one not leave an excellent product. Some just take a little more tweaking with depth/flag settings between passes to get things pefect. Joystick in the cat's have 7 buttons plus a dial on the left side for track speed, let alone all the tiller adjustments; depth, pocket/flag, dumbo ear drop/raise, tiller speed, tiller directional float, up pressure/down pressure, left/right side shift, and the tiller kill button.

Contrary to popular belief, you can get them stuck pretty easy. With the tiller down going uphill you can get buried easy if you're in a soft spot that hasn't been worked or we get fresh snow. As soon as you start spinning and dig a hole you're all done. Back down, try to blade up and fix the hole, catch it on a down pass. They'll cut loose going down steeper pitches pretty easy too, just gotta ride it out. That'll get your heart rate up, especially with trees only about 10 feet away. All along you're making a pass that won't be touched again, so not only do you have to worry about not wiping out some trees, you have to be checking mirrors and out the back to make sure your pass is clean behind you.

A few pictures, more to come eventually.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats002.jpg

Our BR350 winch cat, I'll be spending a fair amount of time in this beast this winter as I am low man on the totem pole and nobody wants to run it. This cat rarely gets hooked up and winched, but we still need one. It's a real bear for fleet grooming, it's slower, can't push as much, more prone to getting stuck, and you can't see out the back very well, all due to the huge winch setup on the back deck. However, you can pull yourself up some disgustingly steep slopes if need be.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats004.jpg


Couple cab shots. Hard to see everything, especially the joystick action. Trust me, there are 7 buttons, 4 on top, 1 for pinky finger, and 2 on the front side for tiller float/tiller lock and tiller fire and up/down pressure cancel.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats015.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats012.jpg

'08 Prinoth Bison, we have 2 new units this season. I got lucky to run this one for 2 shifts, pretty sweet. 150 hours on her so far:drinkup: The best part about these new cats are the headlights, the driving lights are HID's and they are brighter than all hell, but they're almost a blue tone which lights things up very well.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats014.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats016.jpg

Some of the fleet, still another cat in the shop and 2 more behind me. We have 9 all together.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b237/Railslider/StevensSnowcats018.jpg

[dozerman21]

Pretty cool... I thought they would go a little faster than 12mph (although I'm sure that's plenty and they are governed that way).

With those HID's and sitting up close does it ever get too bright, reflecting off the snow? When I plow, if the sun comes out after being out 15-20 hours straight, that sun reflecting off the snow can be a SOB.

[lifetree]

That's impressive !!

[Scag48]

The HID's are a nice addition, I forgot to mention that the rear work lights on the new cats are HID as well. Traditional halogens sometimes tend to reflect off the snow too much when it's falling, but the HID's are quite a bit better in that regard since it's blue light instead of warmer, yellow tones. Sometimes if it's snowing like crazy, I shut all my lights down except for low beams and rear work lights and groom in the dark using only the spolight to line up my pass. For the most part, unless it's snowing, I run all the lights, typically a combo. Work lights on low beam, driving lights on high, and clearance lights on low. Rears on full tilt, side beams and tiller lights are on or off, no low or high beams.

[bobcat_ron]

I have 2 questions, (1) What are the frames made of, I heard they are aluminum? (2) what are the tracks made of?

[Dirtman2007]

Now that's a neat ride. As much as I hate the cold, I would love to have the chance to ride in that!

[Gravel Rat]

Hopefully we don't see on the news " Washington State man causes avalanche with snow groomer that wipes out entire ski resort " :laugh:

So does the snow groomers have a stereo so you can listen to some twangy country music :drinkup:

I can imagine the controls on those groomers being senstive it would take some time getting used too. I hear Ron will be hauling his Kitty up to Whistler to groom trails to make some extra money :jester:

[Scag48]

I have 2 questions, (1) What are the frames made of, I heard they are aluminum? (2) what are the tracks made of?

I can't tell you about the frame, I would assume steel but I could be wrong. These beasts are about 18K pounds without the winch setup. I know the grousers are steel on the Prinoths and older Bombardier BR350's we run. We have 1 Pisten Bully Edge that runs aluminum grousers and that cat will climb and push much more than the Prinoths just because of the lighter tracks. Currently, it's not running the best it has, hopefully the mechanics can get her back to 100%. Heavy duty rubber belting holds the grousers together and all our cats have ice cleats installed as well. I was doing maintenance on my cat the other night, slipped on the grousers, and got my foot stuck between the belting and grouser. Not much fun, I landed on an ice cleat. My buddy laughed pretty good at me for that one.

[Scag48]

Hopefully we don't see on the news " Washington State man causes avalanche with snow groomer that wipes out entire ski resort " :laugh:

So does the snow groomers have a stereo so you can listen to some twangy country music :drinkup:

I can imagine the controls on those groomers being senstive it would take some time getting used too. I hear Ron will be hauling his Kitty up to Whistler to groom trails to make some extra money :jester:

Yeah most of our cats have cd players in them. The cat I ran the last shift I worked was a promotional cat for our terrain park, so I heard. It has a custom paint job and a SICK system in it. 6" speakers in the door panels, super tweeters above the doors, (2) 4" rounds above the operator's seat (stock speaker location) and a 12" Alpine type S subwoofer under the passenger seat. It also just had a new Alpine head unit installed, which is super nice complete with USB audio interface. The system is super LOUD. Kinda worthless when working, you have to be able to hear your radio. Plus now that I'm just starting out, I like to hear what's going on, I don't really run the stereo that much while grooming. I typically run the drivers side window fully open so I can hear the engine for anything abnormal. That and the Cat C9's sound awesome.

I haven't screwed up anything yet, although I hear it's inevitable that you break something. The dumbo ears are the first to go I'm told, forget to lift them up going through a narrow spot or snag them on a tower and off they go. I've been doing well at pulling them up, however I like to stay a marginal distance from lift towers and trees as much as possible. Usually heading up a cat road we're running full stick just to get through it and back to making passes, that's when you gotta be careful not to rip one of those ears off.

[stuvecorp]

They are wild. So that one joystick runs it? Looks like a lot of fun.Thumbs Up

[Scag48]

They are wild. So that one joystick runs it? Looks like a lot of fun.Thumbs Up

I run the whole machine with the joystick, assuming the tiller depth and flag/cup settings are dialed and directional/speed control is via 2 sticks in your left hand. Usually the first 2-3 passes aren't keepers, depending on where we start, so I use those passes to dial in my tiller settings depending on snow conditions. Once it's set, you occasionally bump a little more depth or a little less, here and there, but I can drop, fire, lift, kill, shift, and float the tiller from the joystick, plus control up pressure which is a sweet feature. I try not to use it unless I have to, but say if you roll into the bottom of a trough the tiller will dig in. There's a button on the joystick that when set to up pressure mode, the more you tap it, the less pressure it will require make that tiller not dig in. Really it keeps from creating windrows on a finished pass. If the tiller digs in, snow will fill the cavity around the tiller bar and pour out the sides, let alone the displacement of snow. Likewise once you roll over the top of a crest, I kill the downpressure so I don't leave track marks. Lots of little tricks. If you know you're going to roll over some rocks, I kill the tiller early, bump some up pressure to carry some snow and avoid windrows, and I'll open the flag all the way up to carry even more snow. Once I'm clear of the rocks, fire the tiller, kill up pressure, and fan out the flag. There's so much to learn it's not even funny. It's like mowing a lawn that has varying conditions. Then you get to learn how to use a 12 way blade which is a task within itself but is a weapon once you figure it out.

[stuvecorp]

I'll put one of those down on my list of stuff I would like to run. Once I run a QuadTrac with twin pans, the logging processor/harvester and a dragline. Is the training pretty involved?

[Scag48]

The training was pretty good. The first 2 nights I just rode around with another guy. After that, shifts 3-5 we spent about an hour per day running a machine with our trainer. The last 2 training shifts I ran the cat all night with my trainer with me. Like I said, they are difficult machines to run at first and I was somewhat nervous about going out on my own. I'm such a perfectionist that I refuse to do a bad job at anything. I was worried that I wouldn't be up to the standards that are required. Now that I've spent a night out on my own, I feel a lot better about it. You can get yourself into some serious trouble pretty easy with these things, much like any other piece of equipment. The ability to slide into trees isn't too farfetched and when the visibility up there gets really bad like it can, you won't be able to see more than 5 feet in front of your machine with cliff/drops on one side and a small drop into trees on the other.

[ccstrebe]

What's the little miniature joystick on the dash used for?

[stuvecorp]

The training was pretty good. The first 2 nights I just rode around with another guy. After that, shifts 3-5 we spent about an hour per day running a machine with our trainer. The last 2 training shifts I ran the cat all night with my trainer with me. Like I said, they are difficult machines to run at first and I was somewhat nervous about going out on my own. I'm such a perfectionist that I refuse to do a bad job at anything. I was worried that I wouldn't be up to the standards that are required. Now that I've spent a night out on my own, I feel a lot better about it. You can get yourself into some serious trouble pretty easy with these things, much like any other piece of equipment. The ability to slide into trees isn't too farfetched and when the visibility up there gets really bad like it can, you won't be able to see more than 5 feet in front of your machine with cliff/drops on one side and a small drop into trees on the other.

Yeah, when you start it can be nerve wreaking because you want to do it right and be quick but it comes with time. Do they go through a lot of operators?

[Scag48]

What's the little miniature joystick on the dash used for?

The mini stick adjusts depth of tiller and pocket/flag. Like I said, usually once you get it set, you're not screwing with it too much, just the occasional bump every once in a while to fine tune.

Since the ski season is about 5 months long on a good year, it sounds like the crew for the season sticks it out through the season pretty well. The guys that don't come back are guys who only make it a year or two. As it stands right now, there's a few new guys on the crew, everyone else has been up there for 3+ years. My buddy is my age and is going on his 4th season, my boss has been up there 20+ years.

[all ferris]

Glad to see your working! Those machines are impressive to say the least. How much is a new one? I also thought the operators seat looked plenty plush. Good seats keep the monkey butt away :laugh:

[Tigerotor77W]

What mountain/resort is this?

[Scag48]

Glad to see your working! Those machines are impressive to say the least. How much is a new one? I also thought the operators seat looked plenty plush. Good seats keep the monkey butt away :laugh:

The seats in the new cats are Recaro's, they are super nice. The older cats ran Recaro's as well, then Prinoth shyed away for a couple years and went to an air ride seat that I originally thought was cool but have later found out I don't prefer the air ride. In these machines, you absolutely have to feel everything the machine is going over, especially early season. Feeling the buried rocks with the tracks is essential to not grenading a tiller. Prinoth went back to Recaro buckets for the operator's seat and they are super nice. I've been told the new cats are somewhere around $300K without winch.

Tiger, check out the website www.stevenspass.com

We recieved 10" last night, it's going to be AWESOME when I get back up there tomorrow night. We're supposed to get snow off and on for the next week or so, with a good shot today tapering off into tomorrow. Temps have warmed up a little, it had been so cold for so long that the snow we were getting was too dry for a decent base. This heavier, moisture filled stuff will compact and fill holes much better. Once we have a good base, it will make climbing steeper slopes much easier. 5 nights ago we took a break at about 2:30 AM, sitting at about 5300' above sea level it was about -5 degrees with a 15 MPH breeze. Of course, we jump out of the cats with no jacket, t-shirts and Carhartt loggers in that weather. :drinkup:

[Tigerotor77W]

Tiger, check out the website www.stevenspass.com

Beautiful! Thanks.

I'll visit if I ever have enough money to fly out there. Unlike you people who actually work, I enjoy just throwing money at higher-education institutions for decades at a time. :(

[Scag48]

Hey man, someone has to score those highly sought after degrees. We need engineers to figure out all the problems in the world and then hire the rest of us joystick jockeys to do the monkey work.

[minimax]

Hey scag can you let people ride with you or not.I would love to ride with you one night if you would not mind? you can PM me if you want.

minimax

[Tigerotor77W]

Hey man, someone has to score those highly sought after degrees. We need engineers to figure out all the problems in the world and then hire the rest of us joystick jockeys to do the monkey work.

The ironic thing is, I might end up in marketing if I do go Cat. Fingers crossed as to being able to convince the engineers to listen and -- more importantly -- to execute...

[lawncare18]

Man that seems like a great job!! Must see all sorts of animals out there. How many people go grooming everynight?? Is there mechanics working 24/7 in case you break down??

[Junior M]

Thats freakin awesome!! You lost me on the tiller and flag and whatever else, but its still awesome!

[KrayzKajun]

wow! those things are freakin sweet!!!

[ksss]

Beautiful! Thanks.

I'll visit if I ever have enough money to fly out there. Unlike you people who actually work, I enjoy just throwing money at higher-education institutions for decades at a time. :(

Thats is funny.:laugh:

[Scag48]

Crazy week, we've been slammed with snow just about every night. We have mechanics but they only work during the day, if a cat goes down during the night, either we fix it ourselves or it sits. The cat I was running 2 nights ago broke down on me as soon as I started to climb any slope, I lost all track control. We got it running to get it back to the shop and left it there. I went out into the parking lots with a cat that doesn't currently have a tiller on it and helped make windrows for the snowblower to grab. Blew a fuse that killed all blade functions except lift and tilt. Thought I had toasted a relay but went through all the fuses and found a 20 amp buss that crapped out. By the description of that fuse on the panel, I didn't think it would have anything to do with the blade, but apparently it did. Hopefully I have a little better luck come Sunday night, that was getting ridiculous. I was burning up the radio trying to get both of my cats running, I was bad luck all night it seemed.